


To Live and Die and Live Again

by AriesOnMars



Series: Never Say Die [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Original Character Death(s), Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice, Star Wars Rebels Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 02:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12447906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesOnMars/pseuds/AriesOnMars
Summary: Ahsoka has escaped from the Sith Temple with the knowledge of who Darth Vader truly is and she begins to seek help to understand what it was that could change him so completely. Intel leads her to believe Barriss is still alive and Ahsoka goes to find her, thinking that by undestanding her former friend's fall from grace she can better understand her Master's.





	To Live and Die and Live Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/gifts).



Ahsoka Tano was buried under the Sith Temple on Malachor. Possibly as dead and useless as the broken weapon that the deathly and sacred building held as the Emperor wanted, possibly sifting through the broken remnants of dark knowledge so she may return as an assent to the Empire. And wouldn’t that be a lovely picture? She turned away the Jedi and Anakin Skywalker so she could find herself at Darth Vader’s side, one of his Inquisitors, or perhaps some last lingering scrap of affection would allow him to give her a title all her own.

 

At least that was what she had sought to make it look like.

 

Vader had been weakening by the minute, his life support ruined by the damage Ahsoka had dealt to his helmet. She hadn’t known the extent of the damage to her old Master, but Ahsoka had felt the draining life and heard the pain of each unfiltered breath. If she had a colder heart or a stronger will she could have waited him out. She was faster without so much armor like he had, and what she did have she could have dropped and she could have run and run and run. Vader would have been left reaching out with his mind to where she was last, but never where she was in that moment, crushing and cutting the temple as it fell around them until he suffocated. And, when he suffocated, she would have been crushed under the falling stone. Se had known of no way out and she hadn’t the time to find one. She could have died, nobly, as a Jedi would have died to take out a threat greater than themselves.

 

But Ahsoka was no Jedi, not anymore. She had a moment of fear, and that fear had brought her to anger and hate. She didn’t want to die, and was afraid of it, of becoming forgotten and nothing like the Jedi in the ancient battleground that had become their own monuments. Perhaps the serenity that reached down deep and bound one solidly to the Light Side of the Force had been something she had lost during all this time. Perhaps without the dogma of the Temple it was harder to resist temptation. Perhaps Anakin had left something of himself in her when he had trained her and raised her, something small and ugly and dark that came from the same taint that had led him to the Emperor’s side.

 

Vader had felt her fear of death, her anger at what was happening, and he had offered her salvation. Not for herself, of course, but Vader needed to leave quickly and Ahsoka wanted to be free of the tomb that was building around her. It would require two to leave the Temple without the Sith holocron.

 

Once more Ahsoka took up the role of Apprentice and she followed her Master.

 

* * *

 

 

_Master..._

 

“Hain’t seen many classy ladies around here, no, not fer a while now.”

 

Ahsoka was shaken from her thoughts and she smiled at her guide partially out of relief. That was a dark road, best left for when she could navigate it a little better. “You think I’m classy?”

 

The man, an old Gotal with a hobbling gait, chortled along with her teasing tone. He raised his cane up—and here his limp got worse but he managed to stay on his feet—and shook it at her, “Classier’n most! I should know, I should know. Not the classiest I seen though.”

 

“No?” Ahsoka smiled at him. She was relieved when he set his cane back to the ground to continue walking. He had one cybernetic leg that was shorter than his natural one, and either he had outgrown the length of the prosthetic long ago and never replaced it or, more likely, he had only been able to afford what he used now and wasn’t able to get something more suited for his height. “I feel insulted.”

 

“No insult, no insult, nar. Classiest m’wife, sweetest woman, love her more’n life. She up in th’ stars now,” The man nodded to himself and he walked.

 

“I’m sorry,” Ahsoka said softly.

 

“Why y’be sorry? She be back next week. Me? I like ground better, stay on it as much as I kin. An’ ya got credits, yar?”

 

Ahsoka blinked, shaken for the moment, and then she laughed softly and took out her credits, “I suppose you want to check the shine before I make it to my rooms?”

 

The man took her money and bit it, from the sound of his teeth clicking against the metal he still had a strong bite and sturdy teeth. He was pleased and stored them away before he went to open the door for her. The man, and presumably his wife when she was on-planet, ran an inn that consisted of many small homes scattered out amongst the huge trees that towered on this planet. There were cities she could have been closer to, but cities had too many prying eyes that Ahsoka wanted to avoid. And, on some level, Ahsoka liked the ancient woods better the buildings that had been erected over razed ground. When she looked up to the canopy that stretched so far each tree could be seen from orbit she was humbled by the size, the age, and the knowledge that each had roots that delved so deep into the planet they may have been holding it together. Perhaps those roots were even entangled and holding each other intimately so deep below the surface. If that was true, were there still some holding onto the old, dead roots of trees that used to stand where the cities bustled about now?

 

Ahsoka was only partially listening to the man as he told her what creatures to expect pawing at the door looking for a handout—“Don’ let ‘em lie t’ya! Rats get more’n enough food all the time, let ‘em go hunt in the trees where they belong!”—and which ones to give a wide berth if she saw them approaching. She’d have access to a limited holonet, just local news and weather, and any Imperial broadcasts. She almost asked about if she would be able to make holo calls, but the words died in her throat. She didn’t need that, not now. The Rebellion would know how to function without Fulcrum, she had made sure of that. Eventually another would take her place, someone with as much knowledge of wartime tactics and the drive to do more, do better. Better they not know her failings, and better that anyone who might come to find her stay far away.

 

Especially Ezra Bridger. The boy held so much promise and potential that even Maul had seen it immediately. If there was any hint that Ahsoka Tano lived and was continuing to fight there would be droves of Inquisitors and bounty hunters and soldiers sent after her, and if she led them anywhere near Ezra Bridger they would scoop up the boy and take him to the Emperor who would see all that potential and make him something terrible. Another Inquisitor, but one that could be put into an officer’s uniform and paraded about as the future of the Empire. A breath of fresh life in a properly human package, a soldier to be proud of, even more so if Ezra Bridger should die young and tragically and be used as proof the rebels were monsters.

 

No, the Emperor had enough weapons. He didn’t need Ezra too.

 

The man said his good-byes and started to limp away down the slightly overgrown path back to the main building. Ahsoka turned to him and smiled again, “I wanted to ask something.”

 

“Yar?” The man stopped and shuffled awkwardly to look at her.

 

“With your wife off-planet am I the classiest lady around here right now?”

 

The man snorted out a laugh and shook his head, “Right now? Right now… yar, maybe so. Had a lady a little while ago, little while, very quiet, very modest. Bit too quiet, always seemed sad, from what I saw’a her face.”

 

“Maybe she’s lonely,” Ahsoka said, trying to hide the roving thoughts with a pleasant smile. “I could go introduce myself.”

 

“She gone, off to th’ city, great smog-beast it be,” the Gotal huffed. “Maybe back, though, maybe. Still, though, we’ll see, we’ll see.”

 

“We will,” Ahsoka said softly as she watched the man leave.

 

* * *

 

Abandoning her title of Fulcrum came with losing the ties she had made to it. Most of them would be hard to replace, and impossible to remake. Still, though, she had her mind and she had the Force and she had this one last scrap of information she had taken with her. Kanan Jarrus had made her see Order 66 just a little differently. Not better, obviously, but it made her thinks less of the massacre as all-encompassing. Someone like Master Yoda surviving, that wasn’t so strange, he was wise and gifted with talent and the drive to work hard, but at his age Kanan would have only been a youngling, a Padawan learner out in the field the way she had been. She didn’t recall the name Kanan Jarrus and when she had borrowed the holocron he had stashed away it had no information on any Jedi, Padawan or Knight or Master, with the same name. She didn’t doubt his claims, the knowledge he had, the desire to share what he knew with an apprentice, and the tools he kept with him when lying would have inspired too much fear to be used by anyone who didn’t own them made her know he had been part of the Temple once.

 

She had been safe from the initial purge because she was not near the Temple or the battlegrounds. When the worst occurred she had felt that it may have been her savior, but perhaps not. So she’d sent word to look for people who would display signs she could see Kanan using and knew she likely used herself. Anyone roughly their age who took care to alter or disguise their appearance, someone using a false name that, at this point, would have fifteen years of history behind it. People that would be careful to be ordinary although separate from the Empire as much as one could be. A smuggler, a reliable one but not particularly noteworthy, someone who wouldn’t charge more than they could but wouldn’t charge too little either. A bodyguard, strong but rarely required to fight, and who wouldn’t brag too much of themselves. A farmer, far out of the way and hardly ever with an overabundant bounty in their crops, but they also would never go hungry. A bar owner who managed a small business but one that rarely ever saw a brawl, and one that never saw the authorities coming around. People who could manage on their own, or with a very limited number of close interactions. People who would be unwed, for some old teachings ran too deep to ever be fully dislodged. People who you would overlook, and people who would _want_  to be forgotten. Notice them, check on them if you could, tell her anything that might be of use.

 

Most of the trails went nowhere. One she was hesitant about before, but now she was seeking it out and hoping that the months-old information wasn’t out of date.

 

_”Fulcrum? Might have found one for you, a Miralin woman. Blue eyes, green skin, tattoos like a string of diamonds across her cheeks. She’s in the city of Krella now, working as an interpreter. Good at it, I looked into her past jobs and they’re mostly interpreting, but the thing is if it’s right she’s got to know almost twenty languages and be damn near fluent in all of them. Told the guys she’s working for now she only knew three. Tried following her one day but I lost her in a crowd on the street. Is that the kind of person you’re looking for?”_

 

She’d thanked her informant and said she’d look into it. She never did, it was an old wound, a scar that she didn’t want to have to face. It would have been bitter either way, to find a woman who lied about her abilities and who didn’t know her, or to possibly face someone she’d thought of as a friend who had betrayed her. That had been before Vader. Now she needed to know. She needed to know if it was Barriss, and she needed to know what had convinced her once-friend to become something so different, so unlike the Jedi she prided herself on being. What made her turn to the Dark Side?

 

And what was it that had ruined her own Master?

 

* * *

 

The old man, Ekin, had huffed and grunted and taken personal offense to Ahsoka’s desire to leave the forest for the city after her first night, but eventually he relented ad told her where she could find a shuttle to pick her up. He made sure to mention that the shuttle was normally for those in the city who wanted to see the trees, not the other way around, and Ahsoka thanked him all the same. Now, standing amongst the buildings, she could smile to herself and see the man’s real reason for not wanting her gone. The rent was roughly the same and there was no real bonus to stay out near the forest, even the loss of privacy that came with being in the middle of the city that would come with the hotel rooms and apartments was negated with the availability of the stores and restaurants nearby. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the old man had lost a fair bit of his business to the city that had a few sparse luxuries to tempts travelers with.

 

Krella’s population seemed to be primarily Twi’Lek and Gotal, and when Ahsoka went in deeper to the core of the city she found a few humans that seemed overly friendly and excitable by comparison to the other residents, but the streets were oddly bare. The city itself wasn’t as large as she expected. If anything it was the seed of a city, like a few ships had dropped out of space to make the tall buildings and spilled out a cargo of people ready to make the best of it. Those tall buildings were more or less a bacon to the passing ships to guide them in. Tall, spiked, leafless and shining metal they were a stark contract from the huge towering trees all around. Ahsoka had seen the city from a distance, but her pilot had been kind enough to drop her off away from it so she could avoid being thrust into the middle of so many people. After all, the center of the city was where surveillance was strongest, watching all those who came off of ships and what they carried. No one really expected someone to go to the forests first and then come in.

 

Ahsoka smiled a little as the thought came to her that old Ekin’s greatest amount of business was probably other people who wanted to hide away from those same prying eyes. It was the kind of privacy she wanted, and perhaps it would be the kind of privacy Barriss would have needed too, if she was anywhere near Krella.

 

Throughout the day Ahsoka meandered about, putting on the guise of an excited shopper in one store and the image of a frugal woman already regretting the price of her rooms in another. A Twi’Lek woman chattered on pleasantly as she tried her best to sell Ahsoka jewelry to decorate her white and blue lekku, pretty baubles in silver and sapphire that were worth far less than what the woman was giving freely as she went on about what she had seen in town. Still, she wanted to encourage that well of the comings and goings of Stormtroopers and the routes the officers took, when the ships would pass overhead, and the people who would come out of the transports from places far away or even unmentioned. Ahsoka purchased a chain of silver with pearls and sapphire, and with it she got the stories of the mines and the rivers on the planet. Far from the city, mind, but with just a little hard work the planet they were on was a treasure chest waiting to be opened. Only the Force would save this place and those old, ancient trees that stood guard if anything more valuable than glittery rocks and shining but frivolous metal was found beneath the surface and tangled up in their roots.

 

On she went, hearing bits and snippets from people. The Imperial presence was waning in number, but growing more intense in who was replacing the Stormtroopers. An impossibly tall man had been seen in black armor and covered helmet bearing the Imperial symbol, but what he did no one knew. He asked a few questions in a high and harsh voice to people who stayed out too late, and when he was brought up the mention of him scared the children who saw him as a new boogeyman. Officers had come to inspect the people coming in and out, but they seemed to be more interested in who could leave than in who could arrive. Ahsoka saw the trap easily, the officers were keeping a watch to discourage someone from trying to escape, and a roving Inquisitor to try and quietly hunt down whoever it was. He was doing good so far, hardly any mentions of a red blade had come up when she listened.

 

There had been plans to expand the city, but they were falling through. The trees were too large to safely fell, and so old that the rotting stumps and roots could make huge caverns as they crumbled away and bring the cities down with them. Krella had enough to worry about delving under the city and removing those old roots and stumps and reinforcing the lower levels that were being created without having to make more. Better to have a network of transport running to already cleared glens where smaller towns could start fresh and new. Krella would grow up and down, but only out so far as the trees permitted. That was a comfort, if Imperial construction was being altered then this planet had been deemed unimportant in a larger scheme. Let miners come and remove the sapphires and rubies and emeralds, let fishermen harvest the pearls and the food, but the Empire wouldn’t be turning the planet inside out for any grand and terrible purpose.

 

There were no indigious sentient species to the planet, and not many found the temptation to stay. Twi’Lek and Gotal did more often than others since the abundant plantlife offered them a wider selection of food than it did any people that required even a little meat. The overwhelming forests made herding animals difficult, and letting them roam free wasn’t an option when the uneven and leaf-littered ground hid holes that could lead to a broken leg. Local wildlife liked to run up into the trees when injured and that made for difficult hunting. Meat was expensive, even ration packs with protein derived from guaranteed animal sources cost more than they should have. Ahsoka would need to monitor her diet carefully and try to finish her business quickly if she didn’t want to tempt malnutrition.

 

And so she came to know Krella and the planet Menna 5 well. It was growing dark when she started to turn away. Along with the chain she’d bought—currently looped around one horn and coiled along her lekku on the right side—she had gotten a cloak with a hood that fit easily over her horns. As the lights came on in the streets she raised the hood up and covered her head. The people in the streets were dispersing, going home for the night, or at least somewhere they could hide although none but the children would admit that was what they were doing.

 

It was fast approaching the time for that too-tall man to start stalking the streets.

 

* * *

 

“I’ve kept you too long, my dear! Oh, this will never do, it’s much too dark to let you walk home alone,” a man said from a doorway. He was older than he would admit to, but not wealthy enough to afford cosmetics that would allow him to hide the lines in his face or his thinning hair. For his theatrics he received only a polite smile before the woman he was speaking to covered her face with her veil. She was modestly dressed, perhaps overly so, her dress was loose for easy movement, and while the long skirt was split up either side they only showed black pants and boots beneath. Her face and neck were often covered by a wrap that wound around her head and shoulders with a veil she only removed during her work. Even with the veil green skin and bright eyes could be seen, along with a few locks of long, dark hair framing her face. Without her veil her face it had a lean, angular, and attractive look that was hard to forget—and that was why she sought to keep it covered as often as she could.

 

“I will be fine,” She said softly as she moved to walk around the man. He put his arm across the doorframe to stop her and she was forced to pause out walk into the limb.

 

“Rompita! Please, I can hardly call myself a man if I should let you go out alone.”

 

“Your masculinity is not tied to anything I do,” here the woman’s soft tones took on a firmer note or annoyance and exasperation that were well kept in check. “And Miss Lumo will suffice.”

 

“Miss Lumo, then, let me walk to you the—”

 

“No,” the word was a command and she rose one misleadingly delicate hand, swiping her fingers a little away from his eyes as though to brush aside what he saw. “I will walk alone.”

 

The man paused, his whole body seeming to go slack, and he dropped his arm to take a step back from her as he dumbly repeated, “You will walk alone.”

 

“Go home to your wife and tell her you love her,” she said as she stepped out into the darkness. “Or tell her you hate her, if you do. I don’t care what you say but be honest when you say it.”

 

The man nodded and closed the door as she walked out onto the street. She hadn’t wanted to be out this late but she had lost track of the time. And, honestly, the amount of sunlight didn’t matter if she was honest with herself. Security had been tightened and if the Imperials didn’t find what they were looking for at night they would start looking out during the day. The fact one lone Inquisitor was stalking around at night and no other time was strange in itself. She had never dwelt on it too long to consider that the nighttime was for anything more than cover, though. Rompita Lumo had enough to worry about with keeping herself far away from anyone who may remember the Jedi Padawan and the Republic prisoner Barriss Offee. Most prisoners didn’t survive long enough to be deemed an enemy of the Empire. She was a rare breed indeed, endangered and soon to be extinct if she wasn’t careful with every step.

 

A sound from behind her. She froze and turned back to look down the alley. Nothing at first, the long pause of silence made her pull her skirt up by the long slit on the right side and she slipped out a piece of metal from a holster hidden high on her thigh. A lightsaber, not the one she had or the one of the ones she had stolen, but one cobbled together from parts and pieces from an Inquisitor she had faced before. It was not a fight she was hoping to recreate. The silence gave way to a scuffle and then a clatter and a tooka came scrambling out from the alley, running from the ruckus it had made in an attempt to find a meal in the rubbish. For a moment she smiled and she was glad she hadn’t activated the weapon. She was about to put it away again when she was grabbed by an immeasurable strength around the neck and hoisted up into the air. She didn’t thrash or struggle as most would, she was thinking fast while she still had the oxygen and energy to do so. Where? The alley with the tooka? Another one? There was no lightsaber to see, not even a glow that would hint at one behind her.

 

“Did I break her neck…?”

 

 _There!_  Barriss flicked the weapon on and flung the lightsaber to the shadow that had spoken. Red lit up the shadows brilliantly, covering everything in an ugly light that turned even the shadows into puddles of blood splattered on every surface. There the too-tall too-lanky figure sprang back from the arcing light. The moment of lost concentration gave Barriss the moment of freedom she needed and she landed hard on the ground, flinging her hand out to bring the weapon back to her, and she entered into an old stance. Even now there was enough light to see the other trying to slink back into the shadows. Did he even have a lightsaber? Or did he know he wouldn’t be able to beat her with it?

 

“So it _is_  red,” the voice was like broken glass, brittle and sharp, and it gave away very little. If she had to guess she would guess male, but she wouldn’t have placed her life on that. She knew the body though, it was Kaminoan. The voice came again, echoing down the empty street in a way that made her want to turn around, “I wondered why they call you _Traitor.”_

 

“I am no traitor,” she growled through her veil. Better to hide the snarl and how she fought to school her face back into something passive.

 

“Not to me,” the Inquisitor agreed, and now his voice was so close to the right of her she nearly swung out at it. “Not to my brothers and my sisters. But you _are_  a traitor, and I will deal with you the same as all others.”

 

“The helmet,” Barriss said—for now it was far easier to think of herself as Barriss when she had a lightsaber in her hand and she was waiting for the enemy to advance. “It sends your voice in different directions.”

 

A dry, cruel chuckle, “And more.”

 

Barriss ignored the voice right behind her left ear and she charged forward. She reached out with her mind, with the Force, and she felt the other before she was able to see him in the light of her sword. The Inquisitor was faster than her and he darted backwards, then crouched and jumped directly up where her red light wouldn’t reach. She heard him land on something solid above her although the grunt he made came up the street. She wasn’t eager to draw attention into the street and she turned to run while she had the benefit of distance. She’d hidden before in the city, or in the forest. She could again, and she would find a way to leave come morning.

 

“I see you now!” The Inquisitor’s voice rang out high above her as she ran, up on whatever ledge or balcony he had managed to propel himself. The faint mechanical twang was gone from it and Barriss was sure that this time it was his own voice free from the helmet’s distortion, but she was not willing to look back and try to find him. “I can see where you’re running and you won’t get away from me! No one else has what you have, no one else has that light in their hands!”

 

Barriss bit back a curse and with a flick of her wrist the red blade was gone. No more light for her to run by, but she’d walked the streets often enough to know to avoid the most obvious of obstacles. She didn’t expect the laughter to ring out, high and brittle as he called after her again, “That won’t help you!”

 

There was a pause, then that mechanically tainted voice was back, echoing down the streets as though he was the air itself, “I can see you, Traitor, but you will never see me again…”

 

* * *

 

In the dead silence of the city, devoid of even drunkards and rebellious younglings when there was a tangible threat stalking the streets, Ahsoka heard the jeering call that came from a rooftop streets away. Evolutionarily she was in her element, she was a hunter with oversensitive hearing stalking prey in the dark, guided by the meager light and the vibrations of something running. Instinct told her something was wrong a fraction of a second before she realized what it was—the running was coming towards her, not away. She parted the robe and took her lightsabers from her belt as she walked into the street to meet the other.

 

Two feet, running fast—faster than most people could manage without help from the Force. Ahsoka held her head still, and now she regretted the muffling cloak. That sound of fabric, hers? No, too fast, too far away, clothing rustling as they ran. She reacted to the approaching unknown and her lightsabers came alive as twin pillars of blinding white. The immediate street lit up around her and Ahsoka focused on the sounds to guide her for the half second even she was blinded.

 

The sound of another lighsaber and the footsteps didn’t stop, Ahsoka had to sense the attack more than seeing or hearing it, and she blocked the sudden, hard slice up from below. The attack had been aimed at her belly, it was a good, solid place to aim in an attempt to ensure that the strike would be true. It was also a terrible place to aim, a cut there could have severed her at the hips or disemboweled her, either of which would have left her alive and in agony if they had connected. But there was no time to think, no time to analyze, she could only react, respond, remember her training. With her other saber she swung at the figure. Everything was too fast and either bright white or dark black, Ahsoka wasn’t able to see anything distinguishable. The other jumped back and the red blade whipped back behind her—and now Ahsoka could see for that fraction of a second. Humanoid, female, robed and veiled in black. Ahsoka looked into bright blue eyes and on the bridge of the nose between them the faint hint of black diamonds peeked out from under the veil.

 

The woman flung her free hand up and Ahsoka was shoved back. She braced, fought against the push, and if she hadn’t she would have been flung to the wall of the building behind her. It as long enough for Barriss to continue her run—Ahsoka had no doubt as to who she was facing now—and she was pursued. Ahsoka was after her, her lightsabers still lit and behind her as she kept low. Barriss’s footsteps were loudest, she was running in even, careful strides as she dashed through the alleys that became wider and more open. Ahsoka’s were almost silent, she was fast and not nearly so careful, but she was able to correct herself faster when she stumbled over the pothole in the road that Barriss had tripped over before her. But there was more, something else jumping as quietly as it could from rooftop to rooftop to follow them. Ahsoka hadn’t heard it before, but now it was more obvious as the rooftops came lower to the ground as they reached the edge of the city.

 

“Barriss!” Ahsoka called out. There was a moment of pause and then the woman in front of her was running faster than before.

 

 _“Barriss!”_ Ahsoka called again, and now there was a hard note of something more in her voice. She hadn’t thought of it, she’d forced herself not to think of it, but it came back to her now. That low-simmering anger at what had been done to her, years of second-guessing if she might have been able to stop what had happened to herself if she had been less trusting. If she might have been able to stop the horrors that were committed to all the Jedi if she had been there to do something, anything. And then the knowledge that no, nothing, she would have been overwhelmed and unable to act against her friends if they had come at her with the intent to kill.

 

Ahsoka didn’t know if Barriss heard that turmoil, but either way she had stopped and she had turned to face her. She entered a stance and her lightsaber came on again, bright, and then with a flick of her wrist it darkened until the color was unmistakable. Ahsoka didn’t consider the implications, she bared her teeth and charged, her own lightsabers coming up and then down hard on the red one. Ahsoka had superior strength, she always had, and she forced Barriss back. Even so Barriss was fast and she was able to break Ahsoka’s contact. She dodged fast swipes of the white blades, her dress and cloak were cut in places at the edges but her body was never struck.

 

Ahsoka knew she had to stop. She had to retreat, center herself, and come back with a clear head and a plan of attack. But now, more than ever, she was torn. Her trip was made out of desperation even if she had managed to argue to herself that this was for information only. She saw the red lightsaber reflected in Barriss’s eyes, still so bright and blue and Ahsoka’s heart broke. Anakin’s eyes were so different, red-rimmed and yellow and dead. She was curious about why Barriss was different—and she was angry about it too. Ahsoka lunged and Barriss side-stepped. Her momentum was too much and Ahsoka couldn’t correct it, and when the red blade came down hard on her back lekku she cried out from the pain and the shock of it.

 

She had fallen after the hit and Barriss was over her in an instant, her knee pressed into the small of Ahsoka’s back to keep her down, her tattered robes like a bird of prey mantling around it’s kill as she leaned in close. Barriss’s voice came, deeper now from age and the urge to be silent, but Ahsoka still recognized it.

 

“Stay down, I’ll return.”

 

There was a faint touch on the back of her head and through the cloak Barriss stroked over her back lekku before she darted her hands up to collect Ahsoka’s lightsabers. She jumped up and ran fast away. Ahsoka almost didn’t obey, the need to have her weapons back was too great—and then there was a faint thump behind her. She kept still in the same uncomfortable and unnatural position Barriss had let her drop into.

 

Slowly the sound of footsteps grew more distinct, and there was a nudge to Ahsoka’s thigh. She stayed limp and let herself be moved the fraction of an inch as someone prodded what they presumed to be a corpse.

 

“Strange…” a harsh voice came from high above Ahsoka’s head. Then footsteps again, she was being walked around, and the muttering took on an amused tone. “No matter. She’ll be even easier to find with three crystals in her hands.”

 

Ahsoka kept still and prone on the ground until she felt it was safe to move. Then, carefully, slowly, she turned her head to place one horn flat against the ground and listen. It was like her world opened up, the vibrations in the ground let her know her surroundings far better and more clearly than any light she might have carried. She could hear the people moving around in homes that were this far from the center of the city, there was scrambling and scratching as animals in the dark scuttled around, there were fast footsteps far away now and it took her a moment to realize why they sounded so strange. Barriss and the other had reached the edge of the forest, one was running through the leaf litter on the ground and the other was above in the branches. She heard a door down the street open as clearly as if it had been behind her and Ahsoka got up to her hands and knees, then to her feet. She didn’t trust Barriss to come back, and she didn’t trust the man that had walked around her to let Barriss live if he was so nonchalant about Ahsoka’s apparent demise.

 

As she ran to the forest she heard someone say to another to stay inside, and the door that had opened closed again.

 

* * *

 

The trees on the outskirts of the forest were smaller. Some were scraggily, and some with hardier, but all had the growth of only a few years. When the monstrous trees had been felled to allow the city to be built there was a sudden influx of light and rain, and while the light had cooked some of the more delicate plants and the rain had washed away the weak ones the offspring of the destroyed trees were already rising up from pods that had dropped during their destruction. Some were taller than others and were already striving to be twice the height of Barriss, and some were so small they barely came to her knees. She wasn’t as graceful in the new forest as she had been in the city streets. She was far from the path she’d normally have taken, and when she nearly fell over an outcropping of rock she brought out the red blade of her lightsaber. It was still dull and she didn’t have the time to change that just yet.

 

“Traitor…”

 

Barriss gasped and darted behind the thickest of the young trees to press her back to it. She was only a little way away from the main forest, where trunks thicker and larger than many of the buildings of the city could help to conceal her. It had worked that way before…

 

“I see you, Traitor…”

 

She braced, prepared to run, and then something stopped her. Some innate sense told her to keep still just a moment longer, and she looked over the massive trunks of the trees just a little ways off, then above. She wasn’t hiding now, her blade was out, she was the only thing out in the youngest stretch of forest making noise.

 

Why was she the only thing making noise? She knew she wasn’t alone, and she shouldn’t be able to stop now. Barriss had seen the way the Inquisitor could jump, and with a Kaminoan’s long stride he should have been able to chase her down. But there she was, in relative safety when she should have been just a hair away from standing out in the open…

 

“Keep running, I’ll still catch you…”

 

Her eyes narrowed at the taunt. He didn’t know she wasn’t still running, or he wanted to try and goad her into it again. She stepped away from her tree, out into the open in earnest, and… nothing. No attack from behind, or from side. She looked back to the ancient trees and then she froze—there! Steps behind her, too fast, someone was running at her. She whirled and saw the dark figure darting between the trees so close she didn’t think when she swung her lightsaber at it. It was only when she connected she realized that the figure was too short and too thick to be the Inquisitor.

 

Ahsoka had raised her arm at the swing and the blade had connected hard, but it had paused. There was the crackle of energy and the flare of light that came with any good hit, but the blade didn’t pass through. When Barriss whipped it back away from her there was only a scorch mark to show it had been there. Like her back lekku there was a stinging numbness creeping up her arm, but everything was intact and the pain would eventually fade. Ahsoka let out a shaky sigh and looked to her old friend.

 

“It has a training mode?”

 

Barriss retreated a step and raised her sword again—but it was awkward. She had learned to battle two-handed and her off-hand still held Ahsoka’s lightsabers. Finally, quietly, she answered, “I built it like my old one. Not every situation requires lethal force.”

 

Ahsoka’s gaze dropped to the red blade and her eyes narrowed. She held out a hand, “Give me back my weapons.”

 

“I already have one enemy,” Barriss answered and she made no move to return the lightsabers in her hand. “I don’t need a second at my back.”

 

“He can see the kyber crystals,” Ahsoka said low. “Kaminoan can see in the ultraviolet spectrum and you’re carrying around three targets.”

 

Barriss’s hand tightened on her blade. She glanced to the side, the forest in her peripherial vision, and then she looked back to Ahsoka. “Then even if they’re off he can see them. You’ll be just as in danger as I am.”

 

“I’m the only one you can trust right now, and I wasn’t the one who betrayed _you,”_ Ahsoka said, emotion tinting her words. She didn’t know how well the Inquisitor could see in the darkness but she hated being stuck where he could have seen her easily. The fact she was without her lightsabers only made that feeling worse.

 

Barriss relaxed her stance and her red blade was gone, pitching the two of them into a deep darkness. She spoke softly in the night, so much so Ahsoka could even hear the breath she took before her words, “Did he think I killed you?”

 

“As far as I know.”

 

“Then we’ll use that. He thinks I’m the only one out here, if you help me get rid of him I’ll give you what you want.”

 

“I want more than my lightsabers. I want to talk to you, _finally_  talk to you about what you did.”

 

Barriss was quiet, and then there was the rustle of her veil as she nodded, “I will give you what you want when we survive.”

 

* * *

 

In the forest itself there were a symphony of little sounds from the little creatures that lived in the trees and in the underbrush that came alive at night. They scampered, chittered, called to one another. A flap of leathery wings as something took flight. Ahsoka slunk through the underbrush slowly, carefully, quietly. A hunter’s instincts told her when to pause and when to move, and the Jedi teachings let her feel around her to know what places to avoid so as not to startle some hidden thing into screaming an alarm. She and Barriss had entered the forest and upon coming to a massive tree trunk they had part ways to meet up somewhere in the center. From the far side of the forest Ahsoka could hear a very different series of sounds from her own. She paused and leaned against the tree to rest her horn against it, and through the massive trunk the sounds traveled to her. A cracked, a snap, the sounds of underbrush being cut and the wet vegetation sizzling as it fell to the ground. Hard footsteps that crunched twigs and made little rocks grind against each other. Ahsoka pulled back from the tree and kept walking, faster this time but still careful of her sounds.

 

The plan required a great deal more trust than either of them could reasonably expect form each other. Barriss would make herself a far more tempting target, attracting all the attention with noise while she held onto all three of the lightsabers to bring the Inquisitor’s eye upon her. Ahsoka would put herself in a position to come up behind him, unseen and unnoticed as if she were little more than a ghost. If Ahsoka wanted Barriss dead she could do nothing. If Barriss wanted the same she could disclose her old friend’s location.

 

“Come, then! I will not be chased like some rodent, and I will not be terrorized into madness! If you want me you will have to face me.”

 

Ahsoka couldn’t help but smile, even after years those confrontational words sounded clunky and forced when Barriss spat them out.

 

“Face you?” The high voice echoed along the trees, but with Ahsoka focusing so much on the sounds around her she realized how wrong it sounded. She waited until the critters Barriss had startled into silence started making questioning calls before she continued on. “I am all around you. I see you well enough, it’s not my fault you can’t see me.”

 

“Are you so much of a coward you have to stay hiding?”

 

“If you want to see your demise so badly,” that high voice was shaky with anger now. “Then kill yourself.”

 

There was a sound from above her and Ahsoka looked up. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see a slow, strange movement up above her. She glanced around quickly and then dug her fingers into the bark of the tree to start working her way up.

 

“Coward! Is that what the Empire adores? Warriors who can’t even stand to let their enemy see them?”

 

“You will not call me coward, Traitor!” The voice was loud enough down in the forest that it scared the flying creatures into the air—and loud enough that Ahsoka heard a small, tinny version of it above her and slightly out of synch with the roar from below. She abandoned trying to be quiet. While Barriss was no master at taunting she had found the Inquisitor’s sore spot and he was ignoring everything but her now.

 

“I will call you what I like! If you wish to silence me then come down, face me, fight me!”

 

 _Or don’t since I’m almost there,_  Ahsoka thought as she got up onto a branch and started working her way to the right of the Inquisitor.

 

“I will show you true darkness, Traitor! I will show you death and you will know that _that_  is my face!”

 

There was no mistaking where the voice was coming from now. The echo still rang out on the ground but the cry came through the helmet of the Inquisitor as Ahsoka approached him. She was close now and she closed the gap between them by jumping from her branch hard to his. The Kaminoan jerked at the sudden rustle of the leaves and Ahsoka’s fist cracked against the side of the helmet. She stifled her cry when the metal made her knuckles sing out in pain but the Inquisitor’s yell echoed below through the static from his damaged equipment. He swung out one arm to her to try to knock her away and Ahsoka jumped back but she was on him again from behind. Her fingers were just a half moment behind the Inquisitors as they both grabbed for the circular hilt of his lightsaber. He activated it but she held firm to keep the darkside warrior trapped in his awkward position. He tried to say something but it only came out as a garbled mess as the device that had been throwing his voice cut in and out. The Inquisitor struggled to throw Ahsoka off of his back, and more than once he managed to make her lose her footing. Finally Ahsoka lost the branch under her feet and she was left dangling high above the forest floor. The Inquisitor had no time to celebrate, he hadn’t even realized that he had managed to dislodge her footing before he was being pulled backwards and they both fell from the tree.

 

In the shock of falling Ahsoka let go of the lightsaber. The Inquisitor twisted around but before he had a chance to swing at her she kicked him hard in his thin torso to propel them apart from one another. The Inquisitor continued to fall but Ahsoka hit a branch hard. It only slowed her for a moment, and it knocked the wind out of her, but she was able to grab hold of the next one she struck to haul herself up onto it. She was panting with rough shaky breaths but from her place she could see the Inquisitor hit the ground hard. The branch she had grabbed onto had turned out to be the last one that would have held her weight before the ground.

 

High above Ahsoka could see the Inquisitor start to get to his feet, but Barriss was on him in an instant. Her red blade was out of it’s dull-colored and safe setting. The Inquisitor just barely managed to parry as he backed off. He had a limp now. Static crackled again but there were no discernable words. Barriss was faster than Ahsoka could remember her being, she was a black blur in the night only defined by the red blade she swung. The Inquisitor found her just as much of a challenge, he could only defend himself as she came at him. Block one hit, jump back from another, he was trying to retreat but he knew he couldn’t put his back to her. Ahsoka got her legs under her and jumped down from the branch she was on, braced now for the drop to the ground. The movement and sound of her landing made the Inquisitor whip his head back to her.

 

It was his last mistake. Barriss lunged and her blade pierced him through the middle. The Inquisitor shuddered and he swung his lightsaber at her, but he was in pain and uncoordinated and that last flail was little more than a death throe. Barriss dodged the attack easily and she dispelled her blade. When the Inquisitor fell to his knees she brought the Kaminoan in close to hold him, one hand on the back of his long neck and the other on his forearm to keep him from swinging his lightsaber again. She nearly cradled him as she moved the hand on his neck up and pulled off the damaged helmet. The forest had gone so quiet his ragged breathing was easily heard by all of them.

 

“Were you ever part of the Jedi Temple?” Barriss’s quiet words were almost more of a shock to Ahsoka than when she embraced their enemy. Ahsoka could smell the heavy scent of burned flesh in the air and Barriss’s clothing would absorb that wrong, dark smell quickly. “Were your parents ever visited by the Jedi, were you ever asked to come to the Temple?”

 

The Inquisitor snarled with an open, raw rage. He shuddered again as his life left him, and he hissed at Barriss with hatred, “No… I was… not… suit…”

 

He never finished his answer. He sagged in Barriss’s arms, and she took the time to lay him down on the ground and collect his lightsaber once he no longer needed it.

 

“Why did you ask him that?” Ahsoka asked as she watched Barriss. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t the first time Barriss had killed someone in front of her.

 

“Not here,” Barriss shook her head as she came closer to Ahsoka. She held out Ahsoka’s lightsabers to her and Ahsoka took them quickly. She looked down at her weapons and grimaced, then back up to Barriss with narrowed eyes.

 

“You’re coming with me. I have somewhere we can both lie low.”

 

* * *

 

The walk to the cabin Ahsoka was renting was a quiet one. More than once Ahsoka looked to Barriss, ready to say something or begin her interrogation, but something held her back. Not out in the open, that was a good reason. Not where someone could overhear—not that there was anyone to hear them. Now and then Barriss would glance over and similar thoughts would go through her head. But she was in danger out in the open, and she didn’t dare risk going back to Kella in case the Inquisitor they met had a partner still stalking the alleys. Ahsoka, at the moment, was her safest choice. She finally contented herself with taking the Inquisitor’s lightsaber from under her cloak and starting to carefully disassemble it as they traveled down the road. Ahsoka heard the small clicks and grind of metal against metal and she tilted her head a little to listen before she finally broke the silence.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“The components are useful,” Barriss said softly. She opened the hilt of the lightsaber and a faint red glow surrounded them as she carefully eased out the kyber crystal. It was small and unnaturally well defined, a clear mark it had been grown in a lab somewhere.

 

“Have you done that before?”

 

Barriss was quiet and then she finally nodded, “I was lucky the first time I faced one of them. She didn’t know who I was, only that I was a wanted criminal. I took her lightsaber, I dismantled it, and I built one for myself from the remains. Do you think less of me for it?”

 

Ahsoka wasn’t expecting the question and she kept her face still. Barriss’s face was covered and it was hard to tell what she was feeling, she knew how to shield herself from Ahsoka’s senses, but she sounded so sincerely remorseful that it made her want to stare.

 

“Not for that,” she finally answered. They were approaching the outer sprawl of houses the old man Ekin rented out and Ahsoka’s was near that edge. “I made my own from… similar circumstances. I didn’t leave the crystal the way it was, though.”

 

Barriss turned then towards her right and Ahsoka caught her under her arm too keep her close. Barriss startled and stared at Ahsoka, but the Togruta just jerked her head towards her cabin in the darkened distance, “Wrong way, we’re going over there.”

 

“Of course,” Barriss said softly, and she looked down to her hands. She was swift about dismantling the rest of the lightsaber, by the time they had made it to the cabin she had reduced it to a handful of cylinders and four long, curved bits of metal. The fine mechanics, screws, and the two crystals the hilt had held were tucked into an inner pocket in her cloak. Ahsoka had her guest enter first and then joined her when she wouldn’t have to turn her back to her to turn on the lights.

 

Barriss was strangely at ease in the room, she didn’t look around at the small area with any sort of surprise. It was really only one moderately large room with a section walled off for privacy where the refresher was tucked away. The rest of that one room was sectioned off with cooking equipment and a small table with just two chairs on one wall, a bed against the opposite wall, and the remaining wall housed the door they had just come in through. Ahsoka had been in much worse confinements over the years, but with Barriss sitting down on one of the chairs it suddenly seemed far too small.

 

“You wanted to talk to me,” Barriss said as she eased off her cloak and then removed her veil. Maybe Ahsoka had been expecting scars, some sort of damage from the years or improper use of the Force, so when Barriss looked beautiful Ahsoka lost a bit of her footing. She wasn’t the same as when Ahsoka had last seen her. Her face was sharper now, age had defined her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose to give her elegance where she had simply been pretty before. Her hair had grown out and framed her face in soft dark waves, falling just a little past her shoulder. The tattoos across Barriss’s nose and cheeks were as Ahsoka remembered them, if there was any distortion to them as Barriss grew Ahsoka couldn’t find it.

 

“You look different,” Ahsoka finally said and she took the empty seat at the table to sit with her.

 

“So do you,” Barriss said with a faint smile, but her voice was sad. “I wouldn’t know you if you hadn’t spoken.”

 

“Turns out meat’s more expensive than I thought it was,” Ahsoka said as she shifted her weight in the chair a little. She didn’t have to continue, but she’d found that questioning always went better if there was at least the appearance of give and take. “I never realized how much the Temple spent just to keep me fed and healthy, or that commercial ration packs tend to have only vegetable or artificial protein. At one point I was malnourished, I lost too much weight and my lekku and montral markings broke. Neither of those ever went back to normal after that.”

 

Barriss’s smile was gone now. Without the veil hiding her face she looked so forlorn it made Ahsoka want to comfort her. Barriss spoke softly, “I’m sorry things haven’t been easy for you.”

 

“Were they easy for you?” Ahsoka asked carefully.

 

“No,” Barris said. She leaned forward a little and rested her elbows on the table, laced her fingers together, and pressed her lips to her entwined fingers as she thought. In the light the detritus from the forest was more obvious on her dark clothing, there were flecks of sap and broken twigs and leaves on her sleeves, and her cloak and the bottom of her dress were covered with more of the same. “Do you want to know how I avoided death?”

 

“I want to know everything,” Ahsoka said. “I want to know why you turned away from the Temple, and why you’re being hunted now.”

 

“What happened to me is an easier thing to explain,” Barris said. She thought a little longer, and Ahsoka gave her time, and when Barriss was finally ready she sat up straight in her chair again. She set her hands in her lap and from her posture and voice she seemed as though she was giving her testimony to be judged.

 

“When I was captured and tried I was put into a cell. Every day I expected my execution, but whenever the date came something held it back. Some emergency or something else that kept me safe for only a few days at a time. I was given to the Republic wholly after a time, I do not know if the Jedi were glad to be rid of the responsibility me but I was glad to be free of them. I had no visitor for so long, I didn’t know entirely what day was what when finally I had someone come to my cell. Senators Amidala and Palpatine came to me to ask me my motives. I could not give them a satisfactory answer, not that day or the few more when they came to me. Finally Senator Amidala stopped coming entirely. When Senator Palpatine came to me alone I began again to explain myself and he stopped me and told me he was simply there to give me some comfort in my trying time when none others would come to my side.”

 

“How long were you imprisoned?” Ahsoka asked with a frown. She had always assumed Barriss had been dealt with immediately, after all that had been how she had been treated when the attack against the Jedi Temple had been blamed on her. With proper evidence and a confession she had never considered that Barriss would sit in a cell for so long. She didn’t know what she would have done with that information even if she had known at the time.

 

“I was imprisoned until the fall of the Republic,” Barriss answered softly. “And I only knew that because Palpatine came to me to inform me that he was reconsidering my sentence now that he was Emperor. I had never felt such relief, Ahsoka. Before my time trapped in that one room for so long I had been ready to die, I had accepted my fate, but time wore away my conviction and I promised him I would do whatever I could to make amends.

 

“He left me with hope, but it was not a speedy solution. I was no longer to be executed while the Emperor deliberated, I knew this after a while, but I was still imprisoned. Emperor Palpatine came to me now and then, always telling me to trust him, to wait a little longer, and I did if only because I had nothing else available to me. I was afraid of death, I was afraid of so much. I think… the Emperor waited too long, now that I know what it was he wanted. When I was finally taken from my cell and brought to a private meeting with him my anger was mostly gone. My hatred had dissolved with nothing to hate by my bunk and the walls that held me. I was asked to help train those who the Emperor would recruit to patrol the galaxy as the Jedi once used to.

 

“Perhaps he thought my guards spoke to me kindly on occasion. They did not, and that was when I first discovered that the Jedi had fallen with the Republic. I had felt death on that day, but I had not know what that death was. I knew then, and as I agreed to train those the Emperor would put before me I knew that there was only to be more death.”

 

“That’s why the Inquisitor called you Traitor,” Ahsoka said.

 

“I was to have been a teacher to those that would in time become the youngest of Inquisitors,” Barriss nodded. “I was not alone in this. There were only a small few, but I recognized them by their manners and discipline even if I could not place their faces. They were once Jedi and they had grasped for that same slim chance of freedom that I had been given. I was given assurances that in time my contributions to the Empire would be taken into account and I would receive a full pardon—but for what? I realized as I stood with other past Jedi that there was no longer anyone who would accuse me of anything. My actions had been brash and cruel, but my accusers were dead. The former Jedi I stood with did not look at me with reproach, they hardly looked at me at all. I had already decided that this was only a different imprisonment when _he_  arrived.”

 

“Did Palpatine come to see you again?” Ahsoka asked with a frown.

 

“No, not him,” Barriss shook her head. “Someone else. I didn’t know him, but I could feel him. He was so strong and so terrifying I couldn’t bear to look at him. I could feel anger and hatred coming in waves from him. He gave his orders and he demanded compliance and everyone assembled before him agreed, but when he came too close to me it was all I could do to keep from running. I could _feel_  his malevolence, Ahsoka. I felt it like a physical thing smothering me. If I stayed there, no matter if I did well or poorly, I would die. Darth Vader was going to kill me.”

 

Ahsoka stiffened in her seat, and she tried to look like the news didn’t affect her as much as it did. “I know about Vader. How did you escape?”

 

“I was given a room, a proper room, in one of the towers on Coruscant. It was sparsely furnished but after my cell it seemed opulent. I was given a change of clothing for the night but no shoes. I recognized the tactics to keep me in place even before I knew the door was locked behind me. There was a window on one side of the room and, when I had the chance, I jumped through it and ran. I’ve never stopped running.”

 

“That’s it? You just ran? There wasn’t anyone to stop you?”

 

“There were many who would stop me,” Barriss said softly with a sardonic smile. “Bounty hunters when the Inquisitors were still just children, and then the Inquisitors who didn’t realize fully that they had sold their lives to the Empire. They’ve become stronger since then.”

 

“You asked the Inquisitor before if he had been part of the Jedi Temple.”

 

“I went through the motions of preparing to take students before I ran,” Barriss said. “Part of that included looking over the roster of names. Adults and younglings alike would be asked to serve their Empire and I had only a small portion of the list to observe, but even so I recognized a few names. In the last few years of the war the Jedi Temple took in less and less children to teach and train. Many of them had parents who disagreed with sending their children away, and many others were deemed unsuitable by steadily increasing expectations. The list was pulled from both of those compiled together, those who had been turned away or those who had been kept away. From what I’ve been able to understand the Inquisitors are still pulling from that dwindling number for recruits, and by now that list is sixteen years out of date.”

 

“That’s actually really good to know,” Ahsoka said as she leaned back in her chair. If they only had so many they could train, and at varying degrees of aptitude with the Force, the Inquisitors weren’t going to be a stable unit for the Empire for long. Barriss started to stand up and Ahsoka raised a hand to keep her. “We’re not done yet.”

 

“I told you how I escaped,” Barriss frowned. She hadn’t finished standing, but she still wasn’t sitting again either.

 

“I want to know _why_  you did what you did,” Ahsoka said. “I want to know why you turned away the Jedi and attacked your own people. I want to know why—”

 

“I have already told why, I’ve told it so many times I’m sick of the words,” Barriss glared and she stood up fully. “I was tired of the fighting, the death, the war! I was tired of the Jedi, the peacekeepers, being soldiers to come in and mow down an enemy front without care. Fighting and death can be unavoidable, there are times where one death means stopping hundreds more, but not by doing what we were doing!”

 

“So you killed to avoid killing?” Ahsoka stood up too and she came close to Barriss. Over the years they both had grown, but now, this close, Barriss stood just a fraction below her and Ahsoka had to look down into her eyes. “You claim to hate killing but you ended how many lives when you chose a man who would become a bomb?”

 

“Which lives do you ask me to care for?” Barriss shoved at Ahsoka’s breastplate as her voice rose. “The man and his wife? I killed them! My hand and my mind killed them both. Those in the hangar? I killed them too! Dozens now, dead by me! And there were more, so many more, but you know that don’t you? And why stop there, Ahsoka? What of all those who faced me on the battlefield? Men and woman I cut down, I tried to make it as painless as possible when I could but I couldn’t always and I heard them scream! I heard them scream every night! And what of my men? My soldiers? The clones who would lay down their lives for me if I asked them to? And I did ask them to! Every day, every single day near the end there was a name on the list of the dead that I knew! And they knew it, my men knew it, they knew I was the one who killed their brothers and still they asked me to lead them, to kill them too!”

 

Ahsoka grabbed Barriss’s shoulders when she moved to shove her again, and she matched her voice as she yelled back at her, “Then why me? Why did you try to make them blame me instead of you!”

 

“I never wanted you hurt!” Barried cried back at her. She jerked in Ahsoka’s grip but she was held fast, and she didn’t fight for long. “You think I knew that you would go to the lengths that you did? That you would even be chosen to look into the bombing at all? I didn’t know, and when I knew I wanted so badly for you to stop, but when you didn’t…”

 

“You decided to frame me?” Ahsoka narrowed her eyes.

 

“I wanted you to _join_  me,” Barriss said and she looked down between them. “I wanted to show you the worst in the Jedi. I wanted to you see what I could see. Despite all of their teachings there was no trust, no compassion, no value to life—not to yours or mine or our clones. I thought, if I showed you the worst, then you would join me if I told you what I had done. I wouldn't be alone anymore.”

 

Barriss shuddered in her hands and her tears cooled some of Ahsoka’s anger. She loosened her grip just a little to simply hold Barriss instead of force her still, and she lowered her voice as she spoke again, “You could have left. You didn’t have to kill anyone.”

 

Barriss shook her head slowly and her voice was thick as she spoke again, “I was so afraid, Ahsoka… I was afraid for my life, for the lives of everyone I cared about. I was afraid, and then I was so angry because I couldn’t change it, and I couldn’t tell anyone…”

 

“You had fear,” Ahsoka said softly. She slid her hands to Barriss’s arms and she let her have the freedom to move if she wanted to. “And you felt isolated.”

 

Was that all it took? What that really the answer that Ahsoka had been looking for when it came to Anakin? Fear brought about from attachments one couldn’t help but form and the inability to speak freely of those fears? She wanted to say no, she had never seen her Master so deeply afraid, but she had never known Barriss was afraid either. She had only ever seen her anger and hatred at what she rebelled against. And, if that was it, was it really the attachments themselves that were so terrible, as the Jedi believed, or was it the inability to have them that made them something twisted and wrong? Ahsoka raised a hand up and wiped away the tears streaked across Barriss’s face. The gesture left smudges of grime against her green skin, residue from the tree Ahsoka had climbed earlier in the night.

 

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Barriss closed her eyes at the touch.

 

“I can forgive you now that I know what I’m forgiving,” Ahsoka said. She had spoken before she thought about it, but once the words were out they felt right. Barriss left out a small, choked laugh and she smiled even as fresh tears came. She raised a hand up to put it over Ahsoka’s and turned her face into the touch.

 

“I loved you,” Barriss murmured through her tears. With the touch of skin on skin and how open and vulnerable Barriss was at that moment Ahsoka could feel the quiet whisper of her emotions. She as in turmoil, she was grateful and remorseful and miserable and so glad it made Ahsoka’s own chest ache, but the one thing she wasn’t feeling was deceitful. “I loved you as much as the Jedi would allow it.”

 

“You aren’t a Jedi anymore,” Ahsoka said softly. She felt a tremor run through Barriss’s mind and she tilted her head up to press her lips to Barriss’s temple. “And neither am I.”

 

Barriss pulled back just enough look at Ahsoka again. The first touch was hesitant when Barriss closed the small distance to brush her lips against Ahsoka’s. Years of teaching held them back from everything they wanted, but only at first. When Ahsoka responded Barriss was encouraged, and when she touched along her arm and to her shoulder, when she cupped Ahsoka’s face and slid her fingers along white-marked skin Ahsoka let her own hands wander as well. It was more need than lust, a desire to hold the other close and feel her and know how alive she truly was. Like the forgiveness Ahsoka had given before when it came it felt right.

 

* * *

 

 

The dawn turned out to be a roar of activity Ahsoka couldn’t completely ignore. Flying creatures were flying about and scuttling on the roof, and one gave a particularly sharp screech that finally made Ahsoka’s eyes open wide as she was startled awake. The bed that had come with her meager lodgings had seemed big enough before, but with Barriss tucked against her there seemed to be far too little room. It was lucky that Barriss slept so still, and she had settled onto her side so as to give Ahsoka a little more room. Ahsoka shifted, her arm was around Barriss, and when her hand was held loosely between Barriss’s own tattooed ones. For a moment Ahsoka was tempted to simply stay there, tucked close and warm enough under the covers. She placed a kiss on Barriss’s shoulder—it was inked with the same diamond pattern like on the back of her hand, and Ahsoka had never known that until the pervious night. She rubbed her thumb along one long, slender green finger as she considered taking a day, just one day, to do nothing, and then she finally eased her hand away and sat up in the bed.

 

As she went about the cabin to pick up after the night she was quiet, almost overly so as she set the cleaner to take care of Barriss’s things first. That was at least until something large made a loud sort of honking call outside and Barriss’s only response was to hum in response and tug the blanket up over herself a little higher. At that Ahsoka relaxed a little and went about to make something for breakfast for herself. It made sense, Barriss had stayed on the planet longer if Ahsoka was right about her being the lodger Ekin had lost to the city, she would have gotten used to the sounds of the forest if she stayed so close to it. As if summoned by the thought there was a knock and the door and Ahsoka left her food to answer it. She was dressed enough, while not armored she was at least covered, and she smiled at the Gotal.

 

“Ekin, why so early?”

 

“Bit o’ trouble, bit o’ trouble,” the man said gravely.

 

“What happened?” Ahsoka said as she dropped her smile.

 

“Trouble in the woods, yar,” Ekin nodded and gestured vaguely back towards the city with his cane. “Said it was the woods, men that came, but I don’ believe it. It be that city off there, great monstrosity. Anyway, they asked if I been out, said nar, hain’t been out, asked if I was alone and said yar. Forgot bout ye there, then realized and came t’see ye m’self.”

 

“I haven’t seen anything,” Ahsoka said and she shrugged. “But I wasn’t out long. I did some shopping and came back.”

 

“Yar? Remember when that was?”

 

“I…” Ahsoka jerked when a soft sound came from behind her. She glanced back to see Barriss starting to sit up as she held the blanket to her chest, and Ahsoka moved to press herself in the doorway and close it enough to hide her. Her intention had been to keep Barriss’s presence quiet, if someone was looking for her she didn’t want to risk them finding Barriss quickly. The old man snorted and hit his cane on the ground as he started to turn away.

 

“That be why ye don’t remember! I see, I see, well, keep ye head down fer today. No reason to bring anyone sniffing around, let ’em do that out in the smog-beast where they belong,” the Gotal nodded as he headed off. “Hain’t a classy lady anymore, nar, but at least ye got that lass outta the city. Awful there, best keep away.”

 

“Of course,” Ahsoka said as she closed the door and she sighed. She turned back to Barriss and shared the small, slightly embarrassed smile she had.

 

“That sounded like I should leave the planet,” Barriss said, and her smile faded to something bittersweet. After the night there was a faint link still lingering between them and Ahsoka could hear and feel Barriss’s thoughts on the edge of her own.

 

“You should,” Ahsoka agreed and she secured the door before she came back to the bed. “But you’ll have to wait until your clothes are through the cleaner. I tossed them in when I got up.”

 

“We should probably leave separately,” Barriss said as her hand settled over Ahsoka’s. Green and orange fingers laced together as Ahsoka leaned over her.

 

“We should,” she agreed. “But not yet. I’ll go out in a bit, then you can go, and when I leave the planet I’ll find you again.”


End file.
